Media streaming, for example video streaming or audio streaming, is a common use case for mobile devices, for example mobile telephones, especially so-called smartphones, mobile music players and mobile video players. As a radio link quality between a server providing media data and the mobile device may vary, adaptive streaming methods like MPEG-DASH and HTTP live streaming (HLS) may be used. These methods adapt the video codec data rates used for the transmission of the media streaming to the available radio link quality. This is conducted by means of selecting suitable variants of the required media content, where the different variants have different encodings. Each variant is downloaded as a segment, corresponding to a few seconds of playback time of the media stream, for example 5 to 10 seconds. In other words, the adapted streaming works by breaking the content of a media file into a sequence of small file segments, each segment containing a short interval of playback time of a content that is potentially much longer, for example many hours in duration. The content of the media file may contain a movie, music or a live broadcast. The content is made available at a variety of different bit rates such as alternative segments encoded at different bit rates covering aligned short intervals of playback time are made available. As the content is played back by a user equipment, for example a mobile device, the user equipment automatically selects from the alternatives the next segment to download and play back based on current network conditions. The user equipment may select the segment with the highest bit rate possible that can be downloaded in time for playback without causing stalling events or rebuffering events in the playback. Thus, the user equipment can seamlessly adapt to changing network conditions and may provide high quality playback without stalling or rebuffering events.
However, during the above-described dynamic adapted streaming, a receiver unit of the user equipment may be used more or less continuously resulting in a large power consumption which may affect the operating time of a battery-powered mobile device. Therefore, there is a need to improve media streaming in mobile devices with respect to power consumption and battery lifetime.